The Secret Service Submarine: A Story of the Present War

"She told the Doctor" – the girls would never call the Doctor "Father" – "that if Mr. Jones had a million a minute and was the last man left on earth after a second flood, she would rather spend her life in the garden eating worms than marry him!"

"Marjorie's plenty of pluck," I answered, "and is obviously of romantic temperament. Anyone else in the wind?"

"Anyone else?" she said, with a bitter note in her voice, "whom do we ever see? We live as prisoners here, as you very well know, Johnny, and if it were not for you I should long ago have jumped into Thirty Main Creek and ended it all."

I held her close to me. "Dear," I said, "it will all come right, I am certain. Somehow or other, we shall be able to be married soon, and then you need never see Morstone or the Doctor any more."

"I love Morstone," she replied. "I love the lonely marshes and the bird-noises and the great red dawns and the sweet salt air, but" – she shuddered – "that fiend who married my poor dear mother and drove her to death, I would see burnt to-morrow without a pang of remorse. He has been worse lately, John, far worse. Mrs. Gaunt has been put to watch us like a spy. I can't tell whether he suspects anything about you and me. He may or may not. At any rate, there is something going on which frightens me. I've no doubt you will think me quite hysterical, quite foolish, and I feel it rather than know it, but I am frightened. Only this morning, the Doctor said things to dear Marjorie which were awful. He caught her by the arm and twisted it when she defied him, and his voice was so ugly and cruel, it seemed so inhuman, that I felt as if someone had put ice to the back of my neck. Oh, take me away soon, take Marjorie away too!"

She clung to me in a passion of appeal, and then and there I resolved that, come what might, we would marry and leave this ill-omened and mysterious place.

"What a long time they are!" Doris said after a moment or two, when I had soothed her. "Oh, here they come!"

But it wasn't, it was only Lockhart, who knocked at the door loudly and waited for several seconds before coming in with his contribution to the dinner.

"I'll run down and hurry them up, as there is no one about," I said.

"You'll do nothing of the sort!" she replied quickly. "Really, what a babe you are, John!"

I was just the least bit in the world offended, not seeing why I should not hurry up the truants, especially as I was extremely hungry again; but they came at last, carrying two piled trays of provisions. I had never seen Marjorie look prettier. Her eyes were brighter than ever, and she showed not the slightest trace of unhappiness. Obviously, she had quite forgotten the events of the morning.

I cannot tell you what fun the dinner was. The soup was top-hole – mock turtle, and one of Elizabeth Lazenby's finest efforts. Lockhart was a tremendous success as butler, and the "claret wine" – I should have thrown it at my scout's head at Oxford – tasted like "Château la Rose" at least.

Bernard and Marjorie made the omelette over my fire, while the rest of us sat waiting and Lockhart and I smoked a cigarette. Marjorie ordered my brother about most unmercifully. Suddenly, it was nearing a critical moment and both of them were crouching over the pan, I happened to turn my eyes in their direction. They were not looking at the omelette at all. They were looking at each other and their faces were almost solemn. Then it burst upon me and I fear I was indiscreet. I said aloud: "The very thing! Oh, my holy aunt, the very thing!"

They whipped round.

"What is?" Bernard asked.

"Why, the omelette, you blighter!" I replied, and kicked Doris under the table. She understood at once. Girls are so quick, aren't they?

When we had eaten the omelette and the round of cold beef had "ebbed some," as I once heard a Rhodes' Scholar say at Oxford, my brother rose, glass in hand.

"Mr. Vice," he said, "the King!"

I had dined in the wardroom with Bernard when he was on board the Terrific, and I knew what to do.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the King!" I said, and we drank that loyal toast in silence. Somehow it altered the mood of each individual. A gravity fell upon us, not sadness or boredom, but we stopped to think, as it were. Only two hundred miles away, over the marshes and over the sea, the great German battleships were waiting. Nearer than Penzance is to London, the armies of England at that moment were shivering in the trenches round Ostend. And in Morstone House School – what was there that hung undefined, but heavy and secret, like a miasma upon the air?

Then Bernard said: "Miss Joyce, I have taken the liberty to bring you a little present from London."

"'Doris,' please," she answered.

"Very well then, Doris. It is a bracelet, a little affair of turquoises and pearls, to commemorate our meeting and in the hope that you will always be a good girl and love your brother-in-law."

"Oh, Commander Carey!"

"'Bernard,' please!"

"Well then, Bernard, how sweet of you!"

Poor Doris, and Marjorie too, were not in the way of getting many presents. Upjelly saw to that!

My brother put his hand in his pocket, and then into another pocket, finally into a third. He hesitated, he stammered, and looked positively frightened. It was the first and last time I ever saw the old sport thoroughly done in.

"Damn!" he said, and then grew more embarrassed still. "I am the biggest fool in the Service. I remember now I left the case on my dressing-room table at the Morstone Arms."

Poor little Doris's face fell. She could not help it. But I had a bright idea.

"Oh, that's all right," I said. "There's a certain young imp of mine called Dickson max – "

"Dear boy!" Marjorie murmured, and my brother looked at her quickly.

"He's seventeen, and quite trustworthy," I went on. "He will be delighted to run and fetch it. Anything to be out of school at night! – and as I am headmaster of this East Anglian Eton, I can do as I like. I will ring for him."

Lockhart looked slightly upset, but I didn't care.

"But I thought," my brother remarked, "that this was somewhat in the nature of a – well, shall we say 'secure-from-observation' dinner party."

"Oh, Billy Dickson won't breathe a word," Marjorie said emphatically.

"Well, you command this ship," my brother said, "and it is up to you. Certainly I should like to send for the bracelet, and if you don't keep Whale Island discipline aboard, it's not my affair."

I rang for Dickson max. He arrived, knocked at the door, stepped in, and then his eyes grew very round indeed, but he said not a word. I told him what was wanted and asked him if he would go.

"Rather, sir," he said, "I would be only too delighted."

I gave him the key of the masters' door.

"It's a bitter cold night," my brother put in, "supposing you take my coat and this shooting hat. It'll keep you as warm as toast."

Of course Dickson max. would have scorned the idea of an overcoat under ordinary circumstances, though Bernard didn't know that. But the opportunity of wearing the ulster of a Wing-Commander of Submarines, who had been wounded off Heligoland, was too much for the youthful mind. He flushed with pleasure, and I won't swear that, as he went out into the passage, he didn't salute.

I went downstairs with him, helped him on with the big coat – he was the same height as Bernard and much the same figure – and pressed the heather-mixture shooting hat on his head.

"Now scoot as hard as you can go," I told him, opening the door, and he was gone like a flash into the dark night.

When I got back there was a curious silence. Somehow or other we none of us seemed to know what to say. I can't account for it, but there it was. It was then that my brother came in and I found a side of him I had only suspected but never seen before.

Leaning forward in his chair, he began to talk very quietly, but with great earnestness. I saw what he was up to. He was leading the conversation very near home indeed. It was astonishing how he dominated us all, how we hung on his words and how the sense of sinister surroundings grew and grew as he spoke.

It was the girls who responded. The skill with which he introduced the subject was enormous, but they were marvellously "quick in the uptake." It was Marjorie who leant forward, her great eyes flashing and her lips compressed to a thin line of scarlet.

"Commander Carey," she said, "don't think that I or my sister are entirely ignorant that there is something very wrong about this place. You have turned our thoughts into a new channel."

She was wearing a blouse with loose sleeves, ending in some filmy lace. Suddenly, with her right hand, she pulled up the left-arm sleeve. There were three dark purple marks upon her white arm.

"That was this morning," she said, nodding once or twice. "And now speak out, if you have anything to tell us, about the man who killed my mother as surely as if he did it with a gun, and who has done his best to ruin the lives of my sister and myself. Speak without fear!"